The last sleepless night?

Democrats got a little giddy early on Tuesday evening watching the blow-out by Bob Casey of Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum in Pennsylvania, hoping against hope that the rest of the evening would find them riding a wave of the kind we say in 1994, reversing some of the horrors of the past six years. It was not to be.

The Republican structural advantages - money, extreme gerrymandering, a "freak show"-dominated media that pays more attention to a flubbed joke by an ex-Democratic candidate who wasn't running for anything than a flubbed war, economy, etc - kept the wave at bay and, it appears, kept the senate Republican.

This will give the Democrats plenty of nuisance value, but not much actual power. What's more, it raises the question of just what the Republicans would have to do to suffer a landslide defeat in this country: ruinous war? Check. Corruption scandal after corruption scandal? Check. Economic irresponsibility to an unprecedented degree? Check. Lack of anything approaching oversight or accountability? Check. Homosexual sex scandal? Check again. Even what I expect will turn out to be something of a popular landslide in the actual vote won't do it. Sadly, it's hard to say what will.

The single clarifying phenomenon and among the most salutary of the evening was the defeat of the so-called moderate Republicans, most prominently Senator Chafee of Rhode Island and Rep Nancy Johnson of Rhode Island. A few survived, but they are a far more endangered species than the snail darter. That's because in this regard, Americans have finally wised up a bit. It matters a great deal more who is Speaker of the House or Chairman of the Armed Services Committee than it does who represents you and your friends, however nice or intelligent that person may seem.

Again, the media vastly underplay that issue, preferring to concentrate on personality as if politics were a subset of the celebrity industry; but at least in the future we'll have a clear ideological delineation of our two parties: the Republicans are the Party of God, the Fortune 500, and not much else. The Democrats are the party for everyone who still thinks politics is a matter of people rather than faith and money.

With a level playing field, and a few small Democratic adjustments, particularly with regard to abortion, the Republicans would become a permanent minority - which is why there will never be a level playing field. And those of us who worry for the fate of a planet at the mercy of so irrevocably irresponsible a group of leaders, will have many more sleepless nights after tonight.

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